In the fight for resources, you have two main allies – your Project Plan and your Project Sponsor and/or Project Director. Make sure your Project Plan is well reasoned and detailed enough to specify and justify the number and caliber of resources that your project requires. Then, make sure your Project Sponsor and/or Project Director agrees with you (not the least, by signing the Project Plan). Finally, use both to secure the resources the Greater Good of the Project demands. And if you still don’t get them – which you may not depending on the priority of competing projects – document that fact, so when the project performance suffers, you have ample justification for the requisite change control.
Getting an informed agreement on deliverables ahead of time is one of the most important things you can do to ensure the success of your project. Some of the biggest disconnects that sank many projects before yours involved Customers expecting one thing while the Project Team was developing another.
You should describe the deliverables in excruciating detail. You should dig up examples from other projects and use them to illustrate exactly what will be delivered. If no examples are available, you should prototype the deliverables as closely as possible. And finally, the Customer’s signatures must be all over the deliverable descriptions.
Also keep in mind that as the project progresses, the format and/or content of the deliverables may “evolve.” Make sure that the Customers are constantly updated as to the latest understanding of what will be delivered! (See the “Project Black Box” Pitfall in Project Execution and Control for more details.)
Well, it depends on what “necessary” means and who “determined” it. If you have training as a task in your Project Schedule, and Project Team members really cannot function without it, then you should invoke change control until they either get the training, or learn on the job. On the other hand, if you have people that can teach the tool, on-the-job training may be a very viable option. The bottom line is, your resources must be able to produce the results you expect; if they cannot get to that point because of circumstances beyond your control, you have full right to invoke change control.
This impasse is most likely to occur when management initiates a change to Project Scope, pulls project resources, or alters Project Schedule. Your best course of action, after failing to persuade them of their folly, is to document your objections, including the analysis of the decision and its impact, alternatives you suggested, and all supporting research in a separate document and refer to it in an issues section of the Project Status Report. Subsequent status reports should track the impact of the decision, as well as projections for the potential of continued degradation if the project continues as is.
The best outcome is that as the project progresses, management realizes the impracticality of the situation, and makes changes to the scope, schedule or budget.